Rajasthan Royals venture into US with academy in New Jersey

Cranbury (New Jersey), 05 March 2024: Royals Sports Group-owned franchise Rajasthan Royals today announced the launch of their first-ever academy in the United States, which will be situated in Cranbury, New Jersey. The announcement was made in the presence of Royals’ Head of Academy Coaching, Siddhartha Lahiri, who conducted an in-service training session with the highly qualified coaches of the academy along with specialised masterclasses with more than 50 budding cricketers.

The RR Academy New Jersey becomes the first Academy that is run by the Royals in the North American region. The newest addition to the Royals’ Academy ecosystem is one of the few cricket centres in the United States which boasts of having both an outdoor and an indoor facility, with the latter enabling year-round usage. While the indoor facility is spread across 10,000 sq. ft. accommodating six batting lanes, bowling machines, and other top-notch cricket equipment, the outdoor facility is a full-sized ground located at a distance of 500 metres from the academy.

With a palpable increased interest in the sport within the States and the arrival of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup later this year, the Academy aims to accelerate the development of the young talent present in the country. Through its successful template of academy coaching, which has recently also aided England in discovering a young spinner in Shoaib Bashir, the franchise aims to, first develop the local internal coaches, and then equip them with all the right knowledge and skills to pass on the renowned Royals philosophy and coaching techniques to the kids.

The coaching programmes will further aim to educate youngsters on all core skills, innovative stroke play, power hitting, versatile bowling, wicket keeping and dynamic fielding. A special focus will also be placed on T20 developments with a focus on inspiring, engaging and nurturing cricketers of the future that could potentially play in the IPL.

As with all other Academies that fall under the Royals’ banner, kids enrolled at the RR Academy New Jersey will have the opportunities to take part in RRA-organised tournaments around the world, get feedback from the Royals’ expert coaches, visit the franchise’s High Performance Center in Nagpur (India), and earn themselves a try out for the Royals if their performance is exceptional.

Siddhartha Lahiri, the Head of Academy Coaching at the Royals, commented on the occasion, “This is a significant step in our pursuit of discovering new talent from around the world and nurturing them. Over the past few years, the US has emerged as one of the talent-rich countries when it comes to cricket, and we are excited to be introducing our first-ever Academy in the country which gives us the opportunity to spot this talent at a young age and provide them with expert coaching. We are confident that this one-of-a-kind set-up in the region will help in the progression of US cricket through fast tracked coaches’ and athletes’ development,” said Lahiri, who also serves as a Batting Coach for the Royals across franchises.

Co-founders of the CricLanes facility, which is now RR Academy New Jersey, Hiren Patel and Bhavin Savaliya, also shared a joint reaction. “We are very proud and excited to join hands with the Rajasthan Royals who are also known as the team of firsts. What stands out is their long history of identifying and developing talent, and we are looking forward to how they can help kids in the USA reach their true potential. Through enrolment in the RR Academy New Jersey, our kids will get unparalleled access to their High Performance Centre in India, other academies, and learn to play the “Royals Way” from their coaches. For our coaches, it’s an opportunity to rub shoulders with the best coaches in the world and stay up to date with the current coaching trends.”